I grew up in an underground house, next to a graveyard, in abandoned coal lands… with a pet raccoon. Oddly, this tends not to surprise people as much as I think it will. My rural community skirted the poverty line, a place of failed industry and orange rivers, poor health, and poorer access to healthcare. As a result, I spent my childhood reading a lot about disease and going to a lot of funerals. I ended up with a Ph.D. and a career in science history, which is probably a likely thing to happen when you spend your early years in a cemetery.
Over the years, I’ve worked in an English Department, a History Department, for a Medical Anthropology journal and a Medical Humanities journal. I spent five years at a medical museum among amputation saws, surgery kits, and smallpox vaccines. I’ve climbed through archives, tunneled into catacombs, and travelled the globe in search of stories. In addition to nonfiction and journalism, I also write mysteries and thrillers. I mean, what with that background, I have so much material to work with…
Full Biography:
Dr. BRANDY SCHILLACE (skil-AH-chay) PhD is a historian, novelist, and television show host. Formerly an editor for two journals, Brandy works as a freelance journalist as well as a writer of nonfiction and fiction. Brandy has written about death and dying, Cold War medicine, bioethics, and organ transplant and the history of accidents. Her most recent book, THE INTERMEDIARIES, tells the forgotten, daring history of trans activists, gender affirming surgeries, and the fight for LGBTQ rights in the shadow of the Third Reich.
In fiction, Brandy is author of THE FRAMED WOMEN OF ARDEMORE HOUSE, and THE DEAD COME TO STAY, the first two novels in a mystery series featuring a neurodivergent protagonist.
Brandy has bylines at WSJ, Scientific American, Globe and Mail, HuffPo, WIRED, and UNDARK. She is host of Unsolved Mysteries of Medicine (2025) and the popular YouTube livestream, Peculiar Book Club, featuring bestselling authors of unusual nonfiction, from Lindsey Fitzharris and Mary Roach to Ed Yong and Deborah Blum. She has appeared on Mysteries at the Museum with Don Wildman, The Unbelievable with Dan Akroyd, Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny, and Histories Greatest Mysteries with Laurence Fishburne. Brandy gives regular keynotes and participates in other speaking events, and is a tireless advocate for social justice, disability and LGBTQ+ representation.
(she/her)
The fascinating history of a daring team of sexologists who built the first trans clinic in the shadow of the Third Reich.
Set in interwar Germany, The Intermediaries tells the forgotten story of the Institute for Sexual Science, the world’s first center for homosexual and transgender rights. Headed by a gay Jewish man, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the institute aided in the first gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatments, acting as a rebellious base of operations in the face of rising prejudice, nationalism, and Nazi propaganda.
Books: Jessica Papin, Dystel, Goderich and Bourret Literary Management
Film and Media: Kim Yau, Echo Lake Entertainment.